I am a foreign affairs analyst, writer, independent consultant, and classical music YouTube archivist in the Washington DC area. I have nearly four decades of experience at the nexus of the worlds of intelligence and diplomacy.
I retired from the US Government in early January 2019 following a 38-year career with the US Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research where I managed, mentored, wrote about diplomacy, politics and military affairs, and explained realpolitik to elected leaders, foreign policy decision-makers, military officials and congressional figures.
- From 1980 to 1986, I worked on the USSR, attempting to discern Soviet leadership intentions from open media (Pravda, Izvestiya, etc.). I explored and wrote about the implications of a broad range of Soviet clandestine activities and eventually became the sole writer for the Active Measures Working Group. Please click here to read a study documenting the activities of the AMWG; you may view my unclassified publications, prepared specifically for the counter-Soviet effort, here.
- In 1986 I was invited by the department leadership to work on the Middle East, and for the next 27 years examined the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel's relationship with Iran, Syria, the Palestinians, internal Israeli politics, political-military relations and the strategic balance.
- Prior to my retirement from the department, I had been working on foreign policy issues related to Africa, including Nigeria.
During the course of my career I received numerous Departmental awards for my leadership skills and scholarship. I penned thousands of memos, research papers and in-depth analyses on a vast array of topics central to US foreign and military affairs for policymakers, Congress and the White House. I am intimately familiar with analytic tradecraft and the intelligence profession more generally; my expertise is open-source and all-source intelligence analysis.
In addition to my professional interests, I manage a classical music YouTube channel with more than 34,000 subscribers. I have a large collection of LPs -- including many old classical recordings that have never been commercially marketed on CD -- and enjoy digitizing these rare performances to make them more widely available.
I also enjoy building websites for friends and clients. I've worked with the Drupal CMS for the last 18 years and am available to assist on all aspects of setup, configuration and maintenance. I recently completed re-building a record store with Drupal 7 and am adding LPs daily. (I've been selling LPs to music lovers around the world for the last 15 years.) I am now working with Drupal 8 and eventually will be migrating this site and others.
To send me a message click here or on the tab above. Thank you.
